A Biblical Aramaic Reader: With an Outline Grammar, by Takamitsu Muraoka (Peeters, 2015), 82 pages.
There is a shortage of user-friendly resources for learning biblical Aramaic. Recently, Miles van Pelt published a grammar with a reader that goes through every Aramaic verse in the OT. There are some helpful grammatical and morphological notes throughout, but not enough for beginners to get the help they need. (There are some other, older Aramaic grammars, but I’ll just compare Muraoka’s work with van Pelt’s because they are the two newest works of which I’m aware).
Muroaka’s reader differs from van Pelt’s grammar and has strengths and weaknesses in comparison. First, Muroaka begins his reader with 12 phonological rules for Aramaic vs. Hebrew. These rules are helpful to have right up front, while van Pelt’s grammar lacks these rules (or they are only mentioned throughout the chapters).
Next comes morphology. This section is compact with paradigms and brief explanations. But when I say brief, I mean it–so much so that the notes are difficult to digest by oneself without having a teacher to guide through the material. Van Pelt’s chapters are more expansive and “baby” you a bit more. Some students prefer concision, while others prefer the thicker book with more explanation.
Part II of the book lists the paradigms you need to memorize (3 pages worth) and some simple English to Aramaic exercises with answers in the back. These exercises are useful, but there are only fifteen of them, which is probably not enough to make much of a difference at all. In a book like this that doesn’t move chapter by chapter like a traditional grammar, throwing in a few English to Aramaic exercises isn’t helpful and should be omitted.
Part III contains notes on every single Aramaic verse in the Bible. Sometimes it’s just a simple note that a certain noun is feminine or that a word has undergone metathesis, but for the most part there are notes on 5 or more words or phrases in each verse. Muraoka includes more notes than van Pelt’s grammar and is therefore more helpful when working through the Aramaic texts.
The best part about this work is that each note refers back to sections in part I to various rules of morphology, phonology, syntax, etc. This is brilliant: for each word or phrase you have to get help with, you can flip back to the rules in part I to ingrain them in your memory organically as you work through the texts.
The book is only 82 pages and the reader starts on page 41, taking up exactly half of the book. It’s therefore a nice slim volume you can keep on your shelf right by your Hebrew/Aramaic Bible. Its binding is sown and looks built to last through much use.
In sum, this is a great (and cheap!) volume to have on your shelf and use while you work through Aramaic Daniel and Ezra. If you were to work through Daniel and Ezra twice a year and use Muraoka’s book to cross-reference the notes in part I that he provides in the reader, you would solidify the rules of Aramaic in your mind over time quite naturally. I highly recommend this book and am very glad to own it myself.
Find it here on Amazon.
